1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a retainer for use in retaining a plurality of pin terminals, secured to and disposed in line on a connector, at appointed intervals.
2. Description of the Related Art
A connector mounted on a printed substrate of electronic devices and the like has had a construction wherein merely a plurality of pin-like terminals 22 extend from a connector body 21, as shown in FIG. 8.
With such a connector, it is difficult to always maintain the pitches of the respective terminals 22 constant and so the installation thereof on the printed substrate is sometimes difficult. In addition, the terminals are fractured or deformed during transportation of the connector according to certain circumstances.
So, in order to solve such problems, the present applicant has already proposed a retainer capable of maintaining pitches of the pin terminals constant and of preventing the pin terminals from being deformed.
As shown in FIGS. 9 and 10, the retainer 23, made of synthetic resin, is provided with holes 24 for receiving pin terminals 22 of the connector, which holes are arranged to correspond to the arrangement of the terminals 22. The diameters of respective holes 24 are larger than an outside diameter of pin terminals over the entire axial length thereof. In addition, the retainer is provided with a thin film 25 which can be fractured by passing the pin terminal through the hole 24 covered by the thin film 25.
In the above-described retainer 23, upon inserting a pin terminal 22 of the connector into hole 24, the thin film 25 is fractured by the terminal 22 and the fractured portion is elastically engaged with outer circumferential surface of the inserted pin terminal 22 to thereby allow the terminal 22 to surely support the retainer 23, whereby the pitches of pin terminals 22 can be maintained constant and the terminals 22 are prevented from being deformed during transportation of the connector.
Conventionally, for coping with noise in electronic devices and the like, a construction has been adopted wherein, as shown in FIG. 11 which is an explanatory view illustrating an installation condition, a connector 21 is mounted at an appointed position on a printed-wiring substrate 20 and then a filter element 26 such as a three-terminal capacitor or bead inductor is disposed on signal lines (not shown) of said substrate 20. A plurality of rows of respective pin terminals 22, extending in a longitudinal direction (in the drawing, in a direction perpendicular to the sheet) of the connector 21 and disposed in line at appointed positions, are connected to the signal lines.
However, such a construction has posed a problem in that extra space for filter element 26 must be provided to the side of connector 21 and in that additional labor is required for incorporating the filter element.
Thus, providing the connector 21 internally with a filter element, such as a capacitor, has been proposed in order to avoid such a drawback. But the connector 21 having an internal filter element is very expensive and this construction has posed another problem of giving rise to a substantially high cost.